


Matters of Principle

by rain_sleet_snow



Series: Whole New Vision [19]
Category: Primeval
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-13
Updated: 2009-12-13
Packaged: 2018-03-07 12:01:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3173224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rain_sleet_snow/pseuds/rain_sleet_snow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Twenty years of Kit's life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Matters of Principle

**0-  a word in your shell-like ear**

 

            He’s a very small baby, slightly premature. The nurses aren’t sure if he’ll thrive, but they like him anyway - unlike his mother, who is lippy to the point of insolence, with a glitter in her pale eyes they don’t like one bit. They make sure that when the volunteers come round to hold the premature babies and give them the comfort of a human touch, he’s on the list, even though he’s got a mother, who’s almost mended enough to be discharged and who would be long gone if she had anything to say about it. Christine Carlyle isn’t very touchy-feely, though she’s affectionate enough, and the nurses think that Christopher needs all the love he can get.

 

            They settle him in the volunteer’s arms and she remarks immediately on how little and pliant he is. “He’s a sweetie,” she says warmly. “What’s his name?”

 

            “Christopher,” the ward sister tells her, and marches away.

 

            The volunteer smiles, and jiggles the little boy gently in her arms. “Christopher,” she croons, bending her head to his. “Christopher...”

 

            Christopher Carlyle opens his unfocussed eyes, stares fuzzily out at a grey world, and screams.

  
**5-  nightfall and daybreak**   
  


            Zoe was frequently scrambled on ecstasy, or, when Christine paid her enough to get it, cocaine. But she’d been an au pair once, and knew how to deal with children, and also had a fuzzy idea that Christine’s son didn’t get enough from his mother. Not things like new trainers when he outgrew the old ones, or an anorak when the weather turned cold, but things like eating his greens and brushing his teeth twice a day.  She was also horrified to discover that Christopher was going out on his own at the age of five, dashing across zebra crossings with reckless abandon. So one day she took him out for an ice-cream, and taught him how to cross roads, reasoning that she couldn’t stop him going out but she could contribute to his not being crushed by a double-decker bus.

 

 _Look right. Look left. No, Christopher, look properly. People drive fast here, they’ll squash you flat._.. _Now, Christopher, you see the little green man? That means it’s safe to cross._

 

            Zoe isn’t with him the day he looks up at the tall sign, sees the beeping green man, and runs across the road. She would have dragged him back before the car hit him and flung him high into the air.

 

            Night falls behind Christopher’s eyes, and when the sun rises again he’s in a strange unfamiliar van, on a red stretcher moving fast with something plastic over his nose and mouth, and he doesn’t cry out for his mother. He cries out for Zoe.

 

**10- call me a liar**

 

            “Welcome back, Kit,” Mr. Dauntry says warmly. He’s a primary school headmaster; he’s used to the absurd, the extraordinary and the occasionally heartbreaking, and this ten-year-old meets all three categories. At least, if what Dr. Hart said on the phone is true, he’s now well shot of his biological mother. Mr. Dauntry anticipates changing a few entries in the school database from _Carlyle_ to _Ryan_ shortly. Or _Hart_. _Hart Ryan_? How did these things work when people in civil partnerships adopted children?

 

            He’s a primary school headmaster and he can think about several things at once, so these ruminations don’t distract him from the fact that Kit has an honest-to-God bandage on his ear. “Heavens, that looks like it must hurt,” he says, indicating the bandage, and not failing to notice that both Kit’s foster dads have brought him to school today, and that Kit is standing carefully close to them.

 

            Kit flinches slightly. “Yeah,” he says, his voice even.

 

             “How did you do it?” Mr. Dauntry asks, even though every instinct he’s got is shuffling its feet and tapping its toes and muttering about ‘backing off a little, old boy’.

 

            Kit looks up and looks him dead in the eye. “Mum,” he says baldly, and Ryan’s hand tightens on his shoulder.

 

            Mr. Dauntry knows he’s telling the truth. For one thing, Kit always tells the truth; for another, not even the best child actor could fake the blank bluntness in Kit’s grey eyes. “Oh dear,” he says inadequately, and ruffles Kit’s hair. “Well, we’ll hope it mends soon, won’t we? Are you glad to be back? No, of course you aren’t. No-one’s ever glad to be back at school. Frightful bore. Why don’t you pop along to A3 and say hello to all your classmates? They’ve missed you.”

  
**15- to kill a mockingbird**

 

            Kit doesn’t believe in violence, Stephen thinks, looking at his son. Really, he doesn’t. He understands its use, but he doesn’t think it solves anything and prefers to resolve his problems with words, except when he clearly doesn’t. Kit is tall and strong enough now that he doesn’t generally have trouble, and he’s not like Liz or Nicky were when they were younger, always defending someone and driving Lester and his ex-wife round the bend. So he doesn’t often come home like this: still tense with fury, lip swollen and bruised, knuckles battered, eyebrow split, a fine bruise coming up on his cheekbone, and with a look in his eyes that makes Stephen very glad Kit’s slow to anger.

 

            Stephen coughs, and his son starts violently, drops his schoolbag and looks sheepish, all in less than a second. “Hi, Stephen,” Kit says, trying to be casual, but he is the most dreadful liar and it’s not the slightest bit convincing. “You okay? You’re home earlier than normal.”

 

            “Half-day,” Stephen says. “It’s been known to happen. Care to explain your war wounds?”

 

            “People suck,” Kit answers, which is undoubtedly true, but does very little to explain why he’s been in a fight.

 

            “Oh yeah?” Stephen raises his eyebrows. “And what kind of sucking made you get in a fight?”

 

            Kit takes a moment to reply. Stephen can see the cogs working in his head, the words being chosen. “One of my classmates is gay. Some boys in the year above started in on him.” He looks at Stephen, that flat, direct look that says that Kit’s not necessarily proud of what he’s done, but is dead sure it was the right thing to have done. “So I started in on them.” He shrugs. “They weren’t expecting anyone to do anything. They scattered quickly enough, especially once the others joined in.”

 

            “The others?”

 

            “Nobody much likes Harry,” Kit said truthfully. “I mean, being gay doesn’t make him any less of a twat, you know? But once I got involved, the other guys decided it was worth doing something about.”

 

            “Oh.” Stephen absorbs this. “You don’t like him either?”  


            “No,” Kit says. “But two wrongs don’t make a right. Nobody deserves to be beaten up for what they are.”  

 

            Stephen thinks that he and Ryan may possibly have done something right, raising this kid. He turns, and reaches up for the first aid kit, strategically situated in a kitchen cupboard after Robbie nearly cut his finger off last year. “Come here,” he says. “Let’s clean you up a bit before Ryan gets home.”

  
**20- don't spend it all on drink and riotous living**

 

            “Why are we here?” Flick asks the ceiling, gesticulating a little wildly, beer bottle dangling elegantly from her other hand. Kit decides to overlook the fact that she’s horizontal on the sofa and probably about to spill Carlsberg all over it in favour of stopping Carys and Robbie playing darts while drunk. Well, Robbie’s drunk, Kit can tell by the way his hair falls into his eyes and his wide mouth settles into a semi-permanent cocky smirk; Carys, it’s harder to tell, but she’s had six cans of beer and an ill-advised cocktail of Robbie’s design and she bloody well _ought_ to be drunk.

 

            Once Carys and Robbie have been distracted, Kit returns to Flick, who is about to fall asleep. “I mean,” she says, and yawns cavernously, blonde curly hair falling away from her face and exposing a very small tattoo of god-knows-what in Hindi just under her ear. “I mean. Why? Carys studies engineering because she’s nuts and likes maths. Crazy bitch. Well-known fa... f... thing. Robbie sh- studies psy... _chiatry_ , that’s the one, because he’s a caring soul really. Twinsh. Don’t get me started on the twinsh. Can’t tell ’em apart. Can’t remember what they’re up to either.”

 

            “Not many people can,” Kit says patiently, relieving Flick of her bottle and hoping Uncle Ditzy won’t have reason to see his freewheeling younger daughter for a couple of days. Is he the only one even slightly sober? He is, except for Sam, who left hours ago to try to persuade his boyfriend their relationship was worth sustaining (which it isn’t, in Kit’s humble opinion) and who was being a bit of a wet blanket in any case, looking disapproving every time he saw his younger sister or one of her friends coming within a metre of a bottle. That’s a bit sad.

 

            “But _you_ ,” Flick says, and all but pokes a hole in his stomach. “You. Why?”

 

            “Why what?” Kit asks, backing off so as to wheeze a bit and get more air into his lungs. He wonders how he came to forget that she becomes philosophical when drunk.

 

            “Doctor,” Flick says, squinting up at him with light brown eyes. “Why? Lots of work. Not much fun. Hours sht...st...shtudying.”  


            “I like it,” Kit says, helping her off the sofa. “I like mending things. I like mending people even better.”

 

            “Good f’you,” Flick murmurs dazedly, and passes out against his chest.

 

            Kit staggers under her weight – she’s taller than she seems, and something of a dead weight like this – and yells for help. He gets Carys, even taller than Flick and stronger, because Flick’s fitness is not much more than the result of a fondness for cartwheels and handsprings and one hundred and one other stupid things you can make your body do with enough practice, and Carys really _works_ at it. So Carys props up Flick’s other side, and between them they get her into the spare bedroom with a bucket beside her and Kit rolls her into the recovery position and straightens up.

 

           “Where’s Robbie?” he asks, and Carys shrugs.

 

           “Chucking up.”

 

           “Oh, God,” Kit says, despite being a confirmed atheist. “Where?”

 

           Carys looks amused, leaning back against the chest of drawers and stretching, arching her back like a cat. She is drunk, Kit realises in a moment of sudden clarity. He can see it in the way her inhibitions have gone and she’s suddenly moving in a way that gives him serious trouble in the small matter of taking his eyes off her, in the lazy glint in her catlike eyes and the promise in her smile. “In the bathroom. Down the toilet, as it happens.”

 

           “Tidy of him,” Kit comments, and goes back into the living room. Carys follows. He knows the tightness in the centre of his back means she’s watching him. The flat’s not that much of a mess. In fact, it’s relatively salubrious. “Don’t you think we should clean up? Stephen and Ryan will be back tomorrow, and they’ll be cross if the flat’s wrecked.”

 

           “It’s not,” Carys assures him, from very close to his ear. He jumps a _mile_. “And it’s tomorrow evening they’re coming back. Plenty of time to clean up tomorrow.”

 

           “Maybe,” he agrees.

 

           Carys _does not move_ , damn her.

 

           Kit shuts his eyes. “Carys? I think you should go to bed. Before you seduce someone. Because. You’re kind of drunk. Which makes it kind of hard to tell whether you’re doing it on purpose or not.”

 

           A brief silence, and then Carys is tracing his spine with her finger. Her nails are short, but sharp. He can feel this one through his shirt, mapping every bump of every vertebra. “That’s the idea.”

 

           “You had better not be testing me,” Kit warns, confused into coherence. “That’s messed up. What do you think I’m going to do?”

 

          Carys huffs, and leans her head between his shoulder blades. “Don’t be thick, Kit,” she says, and Kit probably shouldn’t be able to read so much affection into that. Then she moves away and slaps him lightly on the back. “See you in the morning.”

 

           Kit cleans up and stands on the balcony for a long time after she’s gone, looking at the stars. It sort of reminds him of the mural Uncle Jamie painted for him, when he first came to Stephen and Ryan, except the skyline is different. No Gherkin, no London Eye, no St. Paul’s Cathedral.

 

            It’s different, but it’s better, Kit thinks, and goes inside, locking up and then going to his old bedroom, which Stephen and Ryan have kept as it was when he first left for university for the times when he comes home for the holidays. Carys is in his bed, but this probably means less than it would normally, since Robbie is, too, snoring with his head pillowed on Carys’ feet for reasons best known to himself. Digestive upsets fully resolved, Kit sincerely hopes.

 

           He climbs in too, kicks and elbows a bit of room and duvet, and falls asleep, surrounded by friends and a faint aroma of alcohol.

 

           All things considered, it really could be worse.


End file.
